Transcript of Dolly Parton Remembered, Canada Hits US With Tariffs, US Visa Revocations

Dolly Parton has died at the age of 80. She was a singer, a celebrity, a humanitarian, a sex symbol—

a writer and a storyteller. And we tell her story.

I'm Steve Inskeep, with Michele Martin, and this is Up First from NPR News. President Trump put new tariffs on Canadian goods, and now Canada is answering. It's putting tariffs on about $20 billion worth of American products like dairy steel and protein powder. Talks fell apart, and neither side is backing down.

And the Trump administration is moving to revoke nearly 200,000 visas. It says it's cracking down on people who came as tourists then claimed asylum. But some immigration lawyers say the move may be more show than substance. Stay with us. We've got news you need to start your day. There are so many aspects of Dolly Parton's life to celebrate and mourn today. Her talents as a singer, songwriter, and musician, her philanthropy, her career as a businesswoman, theme park owner. She died yesterday in Nashville at the age of 80. According to a statement from a representative, she had recently been diagnosed with cancer. She drew on her own life for some of her most popular songs, like "Jolene," which was inspired by a bank teller who seemed to have a crush on her husband.

Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene. I'm begging of you, please don't take my man.

Julie Hight, who's been covering the music scene for decades from Nashville and with WPLN, is here to talk with us about Parton's contributions to country music and American culture. Good morning, Julie.

Good morning.

It's hard to sum up what she meant to people, but we're going to try, have a go at it.

Yes.

Well, you know, if she had spent her entire life strictly focusing on her career in country music, she would have still been one of the most important singer-songwriters in modern country history. I mean, she gave us "Jolene," as we just heard, "Coat of Many Colors," "I Will Always Love You," so many other enduring songs. But she really fashioned a career that transcended country music without leaving her countryness behind and had huge mainstream pop hits. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and ventured into Hollywood stardom as a magnetic actor with great comedic instincts. But ultimately, her fame was so expansive, you know, her appeal was so universal that she just became a ubiquitous American icon and an embodiment of both authenticity and artifice, of staying true to her roots and making good on her ambitions on this grand scale. So Dolly was really like a prism who reflected all of these different facets to what each and every person saw in her, all of these different qualities.

Hmm.

So, so where did the Dolly story begin?

Really in, in East Tennessee, in the Smoky Mountains, well outside of Sevierville, kind of a remote spot. Picture 12 kids in a rustic cabin, a family that subsisted on what they could farm and their resourcefulness. And at the same time, she was there nurturing her dreams of performing and writing songs, appearing on local radio. And as soon as she got out of high school, she headed to Nashville, tried to establish herself not just as a singer, but as a songwriter too, which was hard for women to do in the '60s. And her songs really began to hit when she found a way to draw stories and lessons and characters and scenes from those humble Appalachian roots. And "Coat of Many Colors" is a fantastic example.

My coat of many colors that my mama made for me. Made only from rags, but I wore it so proudly. Although we had no money, wa was rich as I could be in my coat of many colors my mama made for me.

I take your point that Dolly's sort of her fame and her, her, what she meant to people really transcended genre. But what did she mean to country music specifically over the course of her very long career?

Well, she fleshed out the template for not only country crossing over to pop without losing its identity, but for a country person persona thriving in Hollywood. I mean, she kept her Appalachian roots so colorfully front and center. And dress them up with her love of glitz and glam and her clever self-awareness. But beyond that, I mean, she really made country music feel expansive enough to have global appeal and all-encompassing enough so that it could connect with traditionalists as well as people who feel like they have been shut out and marginalized. You know, she made it feel like it excludes no one, like it makes room for people who love slick pop songs and people who love the most down-home, close-to-the-roots version of country music, and that it tells stories of coming from humble rural origins and taking pride in that and dreaming big that really people all over the globe can see themselves in, in these songs that she wrote.

That is Julie Hyatt of WPLN in Nashville. Julie, thank you so much.

You are so welcome.

Canada is striking back in a trade war with the United States.

The country plans to raise tariffs on almost $20 billion worth of U.S. products in 2 weeks. That mirrors President Trump's latest import taxes on Canadian products.

NPR's Stephen Bisaha is following all this and how this is affecting businesses on both sides of the border. Good morning, Stephen.

Good morning.

How widespread are these Canadian tariffs?

Yeah, it's pretty wide. I mean, there are about 700 American products on this list, some getting tariffed as much as 50%. We are talking steel and aluminum to dairy and toilet paper, also agricultural equipment and American motorcycles, lots of fish, even protein powders on there.

Okay, this actually seems like kind of a random collection of goods. Yeah. So how do we know how they ended up with this list?

Yeah, Canada basically chose these goods so they would add up to a specific amount—close to $20 billion worth of US exports into Canada each year. It is not a coincidence that this is also the value of goods the US is tariffing coming out of Canada. That list stretches from hockey sticks to wine to false beards, so also a pretty seemingly random collection. This is all part of a tit-for-tat back and forth after trade negotiations between the two sides fell apart on Friday. Leaders from both countries are also taking verbal shots at each other. President Trump accuses Canada of ripping off the U.S. with longstanding trade restrictions on U.S. goods like cars, planes and cheese. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, for his part, accused the U.S. of making last-minute changes in the trade talks that he said were unfair and uneconomic. And this is also a rare example of a foreign leader standing up and opposing Trump rather than trying to appease him.

OK, so let's take this from both sides. What do these latest tariffs mean for the U.S.?

Well, $20 billion won't have a huge impact on the US economy. Canada will feel it a little bit more because their economy is smaller, and these goods aren't targeting, like, some of the biggest exports and imports between these countries. But if the trade war ratchets up and brings in other goods, like American cars and Canadian oil, that could have a much bigger effect. But, you know, for businesses who've been dealing with a year and a half of tariff ups and downs now, this is a lot of uncertainty. Like, I was talking with Mark Boker. He owns Alter Ego Comics in Lima, Ohio, and when he's ordering action figures for a store, that can require ordering them 18 months in advance.

If that dollar amount is going to change and what either the customer has to pay or what I'm being charged by my supplier, that makes things significantly more difficult, really impossible to plan around all these tariff changes.

He's also worried about tariffs possibly hitting comics. They are not on the list yet, but most comics are are exported from Canada. So if this trade war keeps ratcheting up, comics and with them Mark's shop could get dragged in, just like, you know, things like tracksuits and wallpaper got dragged in.

Hmm, like who knew that most comics are exported from Canada? Wow. Yeah, right? Lesson for me. Right. So the Supreme Court ruled that some of Trump's tariffs were illegal back in February. So what is the legal justification for his latest tariffs?

Yeah, the Supreme Court ruled Trump's broadest tariff tool was illegal and shouldn't have been used in the first place. So the president's grasping at other trade laws to try and rebuild his tariff options. In this case, he's using Section 338 of the Trade Act of 1930. And don't worry about remembering those specific numbers and that name, but do remember that it lets Trump put up to 50% tariffs on countries who discriminate against U.S. trade. Now, this tariff law could also face legal challenges, but don't expect the courts to act fast. So for now, we are stuck in an escalating trade war without any sign of compromise.

That is NPR's Stephen Bisaha. Stephen, thank you. Thank you. The Trump administration is preparing to revoke up to 200,000 immigration visas.

200,000. If the United States really revoked that many, it would be the largest revocation effort in U.S. history. Immigration attorneys are questioning how much it would really affect immigrants.

NPR immigration correspondent Sergio Martínez-Biltron is here now to talk more about this. Good morning, Sergio. Good morning, Michelle. So why does the government want to revoke so many visas?

The Trump administration says they are tackling immigration fraud, and the State Department is working with the Department of Homeland Security to identify and revoke the visas of immigrants who came to the U.S. for tourism and business and later claimed asylum. Tom Pigott, a spokesperson for the State Department, says getting a visa to later seek asylum is fraud, and that's because people applying for a tourist visa have to say why they're coming to the U.S., and the government is arguing that if the person did not did not tell the immigration officer they were planning on claiming asylum, they have essentially lied, and that's enough to revoke a visa.

Do we have a sense of how many people will be affected?

You know, Pigott says that 200,000 revocations will not happen in one fell swoop but on a rolling basis. Still, Michelle, for many immigration attorneys, this latest move is performative. Here's what California-based attorney Nicolette Glaser told me.

To me, This is a completely empty effort. It doesn't have any consequences. The way I understand the law and the way the law has been applied since at least I started practicing, which was about 25 years ago, this revocation of a visa has zero relevance for anything that can happen on this side of the, the entry, meaning with respect to status, any applications for relief or anything like that.

If an immigrant overstays their short-term visa, they are already breaking the law. So this new policy is just revoking visas that are already invalid.

So Sergio, circling back to something the administration has said regarding fraud, is it true that fraud is rampant in immigration?

So fraud does happen in the immigration system. People sometimes misrepresent material facts to get a benefit or a status they would not be eligible for otherwise. And there's this narrative out there that people apply for asylum to buy time and be able to eventually adjust their status. But even a report from the Government Accountability Office from 2015 shows that termination of asylum cases due to fraud are extremely rare. The State Department, though, has been using the specific case of Beto Coral. He's a Colombian national who came to the US in 2015, and a few months before his stay was set to expire, he applied for asylum. Something to point out is that Coral is an activist, and a lot of his activism revolved around the Colombian presidential elections. He supported the leftist candidate and he spoke out against the right-wing candidate, now president, Abelardo de la Espriella, who was backed by the Trump administration.

But that suggests that people's status could change while they're here, couldn't it? I mean, that circumstances could lead them to become targeted in such a way that would lead them to apply for asylum. But having said that, could this policy change lead to more people being arrested?

Yeah, presumably. For the last year and a half, the Trump administration has been trying to arrest, detain, and deport as many immigrants as possible, even when they are legally present in the US or in the process of adjusting their status. Last month, Michelle, the Trump administration arrested nearly 50,000 immigrants, That's a monthly record in the second Trump term, according to an analysis by the Associated Press of arrest data. Many of these arrests have happened through partnerships between ICE and local law enforcement agencies across the country, which is a low-profile strategy that has proven to be very effective.

That is NPR's Sergio Martínez-Beltrán. Sergio, thank you.

You're welcome.

And that's Up First for Wednesday, August 26th. I'm Michelle Martin. And I'm Steve Inskeep. Today's Up First was edited by Jacob Gans.

Rafael Nahm, Alina Hartounian, Mohammed El Bardisi, and Alice Wolfley. It was produced by Julie Deppenbrock and Nia Dumas. Our director is Christopher Thomas. We get engineering support from Nisha Hynes, and our technical director, also very supportive, is Carly Strange. Our supervising producer is Michael Lipkin. He's pretty supportive too. Join us tomorrow.